Google launches geo blog: Google Lat Long Blog

Google today (errr, make that yesterday---it just became Thursday) launched a new blog and I for one thought it was about time. The Google "geo" blog, is officially called the Google Lat Long Blog, News and notes by the...

Google today (errr, make that yesterday---it just became Thursday) launched a new blog and I for one thought it was about time.
The Google "geo" blog,
is officially called the Google Lat Long Blog, News and notes by the Google Earth and Maps team.

Director John Hanke of the Google Earth and Maps team kicked things off with the following statement:
"Welcome to the Google "geo" blog. As web mapping (dare I say "the geoweb"?) matures, we're finding
that we have a lot more to communicate about new developments in Earth, Maps, Local, and our APIs. The
tools are becoming more powerful, more accessible, and more interrelated -- not only to each other, but
also to the web at large and to things like search."

I really started noticing this interrelation for myself first hand when I embarked upon a roundup of local search
services in January 2006 and noted with exhilaration (I've been a collector of maps since I was a child---don't ask my
dad about filling thumbtack holes in sheetrock walls) the new focus on meshing mapping and search. Things have only heated
up even more since; the most exciting aspects of late being the integration of 3D and satellite imagery with search and available
to everyone. I was impressed in fact to see a link to the Microsoft Virtual Earth blog (I'd suppose they are considered competition
from a business standpoint) prominently displayed
under the "What we're reading" column. I'm hoping it will be a great blog for keeping up with Web mapping in general, something
I've been looking for without much success.

After Hanke's opening statement, the team got right down to nitty gritty business. They posted satellite imagery taken before and after of the
heartbreaking devastation wrought by a Tornado in Greensburg, Kansas (one of the images shown below).